HAL Says “Hello Dave”

I’m sitting here watching the two Astronauts beginning their space walk on the NasaTV web site.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but I can’t help but keep thinking of the scene in the 1968 classic film “2001 A Space Odyssey” where the ship’s human-like intelligent computer, the “HAL 9000,” launched one of the astronauts (Dr. Frank Poole) into space by using one of the remote “pods” to cut his air hoses and push him into space during a repair spacewalk.

The last thing you see of Frank is his fellow astronaut, Dave Bowman, chasing and retrieving his lifeless body prior to returning to the spaceship to deactivate HAL.

HAL, of course, doesn’t make things easy, ending his screen debut by singing a rousing rendition of the old Broadway standard “Daisy.”

This real life spacewalk involves one astronaut driving the external crane boom from inside the space station while another astronaut is strapped to the end of the boom and maneuvered UNDERNEATH the belly of the Space Shuttle in an effort to repair or remove some high temperature ceramic fiber material which was dislocated during launch.

The two astronauts doing the spacewalk will each wear 85’ long tethers in order to prevent them from floating off into space if someone slips or otherwise loses their grip on the shuttle or space station.

You do realize that it is virtually impossible to remain stationary while working in space without something to hold onto or stand on? The astronauts can’t just float around under the belly of the shuttle and start jacking around with a load of tools.

One false move and they would crash into the shuttle, possibly further damaging the tiles, or fly off into space—thus the need to be “mounted” on the end of the crane boom in order to get some leverage to perform the required tasks.

Better them than me—I wish them good luck.